National Council for Teacher Education
National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE) is an canIndian government body set up under the National Council for Teacher Education Act, 1993 (#73, 1993) in 1995 is to formally oversee standards, procedures and processes in the Indian education system.[1][2]
History
Before 1995, the NCTE had existed since 1973 as a government advisory body (and not as a separate institution) to look after development and progress of "teacher education". The NCTE was then only a department of the National Council of Educational Research and Training. As per the NCTE's own admission, it failed in its objective of overlooking and, to an extent, regularising norms and processes in teachers' education in India because of lack of formal jurisdiction. To that effect, the National Policy on Education, 1986[3] allowed the setting up of a government authorised institution with formal powers.[4] The act was amended further on as the "National Council for Teacher Education (Amendment and Validation) Ordinance, 2006". [5]
Current scope
NCTE forms an extremely critical structure of the Indian government's National Curriculum Framework for Teacher Education 2009, and has been the organisation that developed the year 2009 draft of the same framework.[6]
As of 2007, the NCTE has its headquarters in New Delhi apart from regional representations in many other cities.[7] Four official 'Regional Committees' of NCTE operate from Jaipur, Bangalore, Bhubaneswar and Bhopal handling the Northern, Southern, Eastern and Western regions respectively. The councils are responsible for recognising 'teacher training institutions'. It is reported that as on 1 January 2007, "7461 teacher training institutions offering 9045 courses have been recognised by NCTE with an approved intake of 7.72 lakh teacher trainees."[8]
Right to Education
The Ministry of Human Resource Department (HRD), Deptt. of Social Education and Literacy has authorized National Council of Educational Research & Training to lay down the curriculum and evaluation procedure for elementary education and to develop framework of national curriculum under clause a of Sub-Section 6 of Section 7 of the Act vide its Gazette Notification[9]
